The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin is already planning cost cutting measures with parish councils and finance committees after donations from the public fell by 16 per cent.

Dioceses across Ireland are suffering similar drops in revenue as they cope with the escalating cost of clerical-abuse compensation claims.

Fr Brendan Quinlivan, communications director of the Killaloe Diocese, told the Irish Independent: “What’s happening in Dublin is the trend across the country.”

The latest pay reduction is the second experienced by Dublin priests in a year after a six per cent cut in 2010.

The Independent reports that the basic income of a curate in the Dublin Archdiocese is now $33,000 a year, plus up to $4,000 depending on length of service.

Parish priests get an additional allowance of €7,000, which would bring their maximum total to €44,000.
Wages for priests in the Dublin diocese are supported by the first collection at Mass with the money then channelled into a Common Fund controlled by a committee of priests.

“When people give more to this fund, priests get more -- when it goes down, they get less,” a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Dublin told the paper.

Income in the diocese plummeted by $10million between 2009 and 2010, dropping from $91million to $81million.

An archaic Irish law may allow priests to stay silent on allegations of sex abuse that are disclosed to them outside of confessionsGoogle Images